Separate Facts from Inference

7) SEPARATE FACTS FROM INFERENCES One of the most important things during the process of interviewing the potential candidate for hiring them in certain post or position in the organization is the interviewers must be equipped with skills that they can separate facts from inferences that they have made earlier. What is fact? Fact is something that can be proven by observation from cause to effect. An inference is something that is inferred, or implied, by the existence of two conditions.

For this, every manager, supervisors and Human Resource representative should be trained to be a fact-gathering interviewer. The interviewers have responsibility to obtain proper information about the job that the applicant wants to hire. This is what the interviewer must equip themselves because the candidates they meet for the first time must be screened thoroughly. The specific approach to a fact-gathering interview will depend on variety of things, including whom they are interviewing with, their knowledge about the job position offered by the organization itself, and their own personal preferences.

Every interviewer must developed unique method in conducting a fact-gathering interview because different job post interview have different way or method in collecting facts from the candidates. As interviewers, they must start collecting important fact from the candidates such as in the interview for the job as PTD (Pegawai Tadbir & Diplomatik). PTD is one of the posts in Malaysian Civil Service. It is administrative or executive power machinery in implementing policies and government decisions to achieve the objectives and goals of the nation.

In fact, this service has its own specialized field, such as International Relations and Foreign Affairs, National Security and Defence, Management of Information and Communication Technology, Administration and Regional Development / Land / District / Local, Planning and Social Administration / Infrastructure, Human Resource Management and Organization, Economic Resource Management, Resource Management and Finance.

This service is a major leadership role in a variety of ministries and federal departments as well as some state administration as Secretary General, Deputy Secretary General, Director General, Deputy Director General, State Secretary, Ambassador, and the District Officer. For selecting the most suitable candidate to fill this critical job post in the government sector, the interviewers are from the members of the Public Service Commission (PSC) who have received their pension.

Most of them were also the former Head of Department in government bodies from grade 54 and above. For the interviewers, they must put in mind this is a further assessment session and the final stage of shortlisting from the previous stages, in which a potential candidate is evaluated for a prospective employment. An interview would be the final instrument to evaluate and validate a candidate’s overall performance in the aspects of knowledge, skills and personality. The interview hopes to determine whether or not the applicant is suitable for the job.

Thus, the interviewer’s job is to gather as much as they can facts, opinions and they will make decision based on what they have gained from the candidates. Most of the interviews gained facts based on the questions that have been outline below: 1. Educational background 2. Family background 3. Way of the candidates walk 4. Communication skills 5. Style in standing an argument from selected ideas 6. Job experience All of the questions that will be asked such as educational and family background are needed to know the suitability with the job sector that they will be post.

The family environment factors are also helping the interviewers to gain information if the candidates have experience to live in a family who are from the government servants, so they are likely can adapt well in the future job environment because of the exposure from their family. Looking into the way of candidates walk and their communication skills will relate us to the psychological development. For that, the interviewer must equip themselves with Human Psychological Knowledge.

This is because, 50% of the accuracy of human behaviour can be read from their walking style and communication skills. For the question on standing an argument from selected idea is where the interviewer wanted to collect fact from the candidates their knowledge about administration world. Ask the candidates to list some information about current cabinet members, who is the current Chief Secretary of Government or KSN (Ketua Setiausaha Negara), Head of Civil Service and etc. The fact about parliamentary system, government policies and current issues were also being recorded. Question hat will be asked to gain candidate opinion can also be asked as additional information such as: what are your life goals, why want to be PTD and what you want to be in the next few years. 8) RECOGNIZE STEREOTYPES AND BIASES What is stereotype? According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, stereotype is defined as a fixed idea or image that many people have a particular type of a person or thing, which is often not true in reality. Bias is defined as a strong feeling in favour of or against one group of people, or one side in an argument, often not based on fair judgement.

From those definitions, we can see that both conditions are usually occurring in the realm of hiring people for certain job. These problems must be eliminated by the managers, supervisors and Human Resource representative during conducting any interview because preferring stereotypes and biases will resulting in hiring people that are not capable in doing their job although the interviewer think the opposite. In the world of hiring workers, usually interviewers will involve in stereotyping when they start to form a generalization of opinions about people of a given gender, race, ethnic background, or appearance.

These cultures of stereotyping have flourished in many conditions such as culture and everyday life, not forgetting organization and business world. Usually, interviewers use stereotype to make decision about hiring any person with little or no information about the person itself. For that, discrimination will continue to happen because the interviewers (managers, supervisors and HR representatives) will not selecting a person with concrete evidence and only based by sentiments.

These are some examples of common stereotypes and biases that can be intentionally or unintentionally made by interviewers which could create problems such as not hiring suitable workforce needed by the organization thus creating liability and problems under employment discrimination laws. * Stereotypes in advertising for candidates (example: only selecting fresh graduates or only selecting worker for certain race because they are more hardworking. ) * Applicant’s appearances that make him/her seem unable to do job. * Refusing to pregnant women * People with disabilities and old people Younger people have high energy levels and are very open to learning new technology. * Disabled or handicapped person should be employed for a short term period. * Woman and minorities cannot do certain job or do not want certain job. * Candidates, who are shy during the interviews, will not perform well on the job. ——————————————– [ 1 ]. http://wiki. answers. com [ 2 ]. (Stev e W. Schneider, n. d. pg 1) [ 3 ]. (http://imej. spa. gov. my/dev/pdf/ProfilingBasedRecruitment. pdf) [ 4 ]. ( Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 2010) [ 5 ]. (ohioemployerlawblog. com, 2008) [ 6 ]. ( ohioemployerlawblog. com, 2008)